


And He Did

by Anubistheshy



Category: Original Work
Genre: Basically inspired by the fic "You Came Running with My Heart" by Acavall, Original Character Death(s), Other, Post-Apocalypse, Romance, Wanderlust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-08 01:52:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4286121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anubistheshy/pseuds/Anubistheshy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One man's quest to make his way in a drastically changed world and find a new purpose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And He Did

**Author's Note:**

> Originally, this was a writing exercise for dialogue, but I liked it enough to publish it here. I tried to edit it myself, but if I made any errors, please let me know! 
> 
> Update: I've edited this work, and revamped some stuff. Mainly correcting awkward sentences, and adding in more detail. Have a look if you'd like.

Bones woke in a cold sweat. The soaked sheets clung to his back, and he sat up in bed to peel them off his wet skin. He stared at the angry red numbers at the alarm clock that sat on his bedside table, and sighed as he began to pull off his uncomfortably saturated shirt. The cold air of the room hit his chest, and he shivered. 1:45, his watch read. He always bolted awake at the same time each night, sheets somewhere between damp and drenched from sweat. It would be about two hours before Ivy and Roger came back from their nightly run to town.

He slid out of bed, not bothering to change the sheets. Bones knew from the past two weeks that sleep would not return if he stayed in the bedroom, so he silently opened the door and padded down the scratchy hallway carpet that led to the kitchen. He knew that he had reached the other room when his feet met cold linoleum, and he groped in the dark for a lantern. When Bones finally found it, he carefully turned it on, squinting his eyes as the room flooded with harsh fluorescent light. The light emanating from the bulb was strong, and made stronger by the hours Bones had spent in darkness. He scrunched his eyes shut, and then slowly opened them to see the dizzying white walls of the kitchen finally come into focus. It looked like a fever dream. Bones sank down to the floor near the table and pressed his forehead to the cool surface of the shoddy glass kitchen table in the middle of the room. He let the lantern clatter onto its side, and closed his eyes, taking in the chill of the glass. It was 2:50.

Usually, Ivy and Roger came back slick with perspiration, their tattered leather jackets slung loosely over their shoulders. Sometimes they stumbled into the trailer in a daze; their eyes would be unfocused and their bodies caked with blood. It wasn’t normal, but nothing was anymore. At first, Bones was disturbed by it. The ever nagging implication that his housemates— no, friends, they were the only people left who seemed to vaguely fit that term— had killed people was ever present, but after a few months it didn’t seem to matter anymore. Nothing did. Furthermore, Bones was absolutely convinced the cream shag rug they kept in the entrance would be an unpleasant shade of brown by the year’s end, if they made it that long. Carpets were more pleasant to think about. Happy thoughts. Carpets. His mother’s Persian rug in the foyer of the old house. That was a vision of fleeting warmth, and he clung to it.

When the motley duo trudged through the door at 3:00, Bones was nearly asleep, but quickly snapped to attention when they entered the kitchen area. One could never be too cautious these days, after all. Ivy sported a nosebleed that had made a stripe from her left nostril to chin, and Roger trailed behind her, dutifully holding an iron pipe for their joint protection. Both of their leather jackets were missing. Stability, he thought. Stability is dead, and God is on an extended lunch break.

“Did you find anything on your trip?” Bones asked, scratching his nose. He knew they had come back empty handed, but there was no harm in asking if they had seen anything unusual. Ivy was the first to speak. “No, Bonesy, we didn’t. Were you okay while we were gone?” Her shoulders were slumped, suggesting they had seen something awful. Bones decided not to press for information. It had been a long night for everyone.

“Yeah. Do you want some vegetables? I boiled some earlier with the leftovers.” The leftovers themselves had been a find. Ivy had managed to catch a rabbit in a snare the day before, and Bones’ stomach churned at the thought of consuming it. He had been a vegetarian before the incident, but it had been impossible to keep up under their living circumstances. In recent weeks, food had been especially tight. Even the rain had failed to come.

“Sure,” Roger replied simply as he started towards the pot they kept on the hearth. The fire was still going strong.

“I mean, if you’re willing to go out again tomorrow you can,” Ivy grumbled. “There’s not much food left. We should ration our supplies.”

Roger began to spoon the stew into two bowls pulled from a cupboard next to the fireplace. “Or, we could leave and find a better place to live. We have the radiation detector thing you brought, right?” 

“Obviously,” Ivy snorted. “Is there any reason you’re using two bowls, by the way? It would be better if you just ate the rest. There’s barely anything left, and you need your strength more than I do.”

“I’m not letting you starve. You need to eat too.” Roger didn’t look up from the pot. He let the spoon clang down into the now empty pot, walking over and setting the bowls down on the glass table. “So come eat.” 

Ivy sighed and went over to eat. It wasn’t worth arguing about now, Bones knew. She had no choice but to eat tonight. Five months ago, it would have been different. Back then, the stores still had food left on the shelves, and they hadn’t had to scavenge. Money had become worthless, Ivy justified, and with some hesitation, they looted the food store on the corner alongside their neighbors. Waiting had cost them food, and time. It even cost them the house they were staying in, and forced them to stay in an skinny little apartment that someone had already ransacked.

They ate in silence, and Bones settled on the floor. There were only two chairs, and it was certainly better than returning to his saturated mattress, so he chose to stay while Ivy and Roger talked. He stared at the pictures that had been sitting on the mantelpiece above the hearth since they settled in the slim residence. A picture of two children sitting in a wagon with pumpkins was placed next to a wedding picture. Bones never recalled seeing them prior to that night.

As of the morning, the water tank had been dry for two days now, and Roger was ready to leave. Bones didn’t really care either way, but even Ivy, stubborn, stubborn Ivy, was starting to see the desperation of their situation. Roger was sure that he had seen a lake somewhere past the forest to the east, so they set off to find water around noon. It was only after they had walked for ten miles that it had become clear that they were hopelessly lost. The place they had come to was nothing but scorched earth, and Bones, in an act of sheer exhaustion, sank down yet again. Ivy followed suit, but sat with her back to them both, and Roger stood and said nothing. 

After some time, Ivy turned around. “Are you still glad we did this?” she spat with a scowl on her face.

“Yes, and no. What else were we supposed to do, stay there and starve?” Roger asked, wiping sweat off of his forehead. “There’s no water there, and no food. I can’t even think straight anymore, Ivy.” 

“Don’t blame this on me. Do NOT blame this on me.” She was weak with exhaustion, but not too weak for a fight. “We didn’t need to go so far. I told you there was a stream in the other direction—”

“You said that you weren’t sure. I know there’s a lake on the side of this hill.”

“And where is the lake, pray tell? We still don’t have water, and I’ve had it with you. I’m leaving. That’s it. I’m finding somewhere else, something else to do.”

“Fuck you, don’t you value your life?!”

“What’s a life worth devoid of people, huh? I’d rather die out here alone than with you!” With that, she started to march in the opposite direction, back towards the apartment, and Roger walked over the hill they were sat on with his iron pipe in hand. Bones watched him walk through where the lake should have been, and disappear into the horizon. His tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth, and he swallowed in an attempt to gather moisture, but it had been too long since he last had something to drink, so no saliva came. The only thing to do now was to keep walking, so Bones set out towards the north, uncertain he would live to see tomorrow.

———

Bones wept when he stumbled upon a stream three hours later. As he knelt to drink, he noticed a small patch of clover by the water’s edge. They were the first green plants he had seen in months, and the greenery soothed and reassured him as he pressed his lips to the water’s surface. The water could have been contaminated, he reasoned, but taking a chance was better than dying an agonizing death from dehydration. Anything was better than that.

Even after he had finished drinking, Bones could not stop crying, but as far as he knew, no one was there to listen, and this depressed him further. The unfortunate thing, he thought, was that after taking care of your basic needs, you start feeling things again, and that’s the hardest part of being human. Never before had he been so acutely aware of his own heartbeat, or his loneliness.

The sun set, and the world seemed infinitely quiet. Even the stream was silent, as if it mourned for everything that had been before and all the things to come. Time didn’t matter anymore, Bones thought as he hopped over the stream. Perhaps the clocks had chosen to lunch with God too. Bones counted the days unreliably, but he was relatively certain it had been a week since his companions had left. In their absence, he tread through forests of dead trees, following the streams and slowly starving. The trees, with their blackened bark, looked like shriveled arms that had given up on reaching for the heavens.

The nights dragged themselves restlessly into days, and Bones finally chose to use the pointing hands of the sooty trees as a guide. He composed poetry and promptly forgot it as he wrote more and more words in his mind. He traveled north quietly, not uttering a word. At times, it was almost like anyone Bones had ever known ceased to exist completely, and when he saw matted hair, fiery red, peeking defiantly from under a tree and burnt leaves, he couldn’t bring himself to think about the friends he once had.

A stone cottage sat on a grassy hill in the distance. Bones marveled at the smoke pouring forth from the chimney, and admired how the grass beneath his feet was so immeasurably green and wet with dew. Bones moved with heaviness towards the shining yellow wonder of the cottage’s illuminated windows.

Knocking on the door proved more difficult than Bones anticipated. In the wake of what seemed to be the end of the world as everyone knew it, he hadn’t worried much about serial killers. Knowing that he wasn’t the last human left in the area made the fear seem more logical, but he knocked nonetheless. The person who answered the door was tall, and they had a mess of candy floss hair. How anyone had their hair impeccably dyed at a time like this was beyond him.

“Are you going to stare at me or come in?” the stranger in the doorway said, shifting uncomfortably on the balls of their feet.

Bones closed his open mouth. “You’re the first person I’ve seen in two months,” he croaked, voice hoarse from disuse. “I didn’t think there were any people left here.” He gestured vaguely around him as he said this. 

“Neither did I. Come in for tea, we should talk.”

The stranger stepped aside, and Bones walked through the doorway. The house was so, so warm. The red brick walls formed a nice entrance, and Bones followed the stranger until they arrived in the kitchen. “Let me put the kettle on,” Candy Floss said. “Make yourself at home.” Bones sat down at the wooden kitchen table. There were little blue flowers painted on the surface, and none of the four other chairs matched the one he chose to sit in. Nothing in the house matched, really. An empty bowl rested in the middle of the table, devoid or fruit or napkins, and the tea kettle whistled in the background. 

After Candy Floss had poured cups of tea for both of them, they sat down across from him. “Thank you,” Bones said, looking into the steam swirling off the tea’s surface. The bumpy surface of the ceramic mug scratched his fingertips as he tested to see if the tea was ready to drink. Candy Floss said nothing, and stared out the window above the sink. It was difficult to talk to anyone when silence had become the norm, Bones thought as he looked up. He noticed Candy Floss’ hair, which was the most beautiful thing he had seen in months. It looked wispy and soft to the touch, and Bones’ hand twitch involuntarily as he imagined what it felt like to have brushed hair.

“I don’t think you told me your name. I’m Bones, and I’m just a wandering man,” he said as he finally looked up. Candy Floss was still staring blankly out the window.

They turned to face him. “Nice to meet you. I’m Whitney. ”

There was silence again. The tea had cooled sufficiently, and Bones took a sip. Boiled water was safe to drink, so there was no need to worry about parasites this time. It was a relief, really. The stream water felt like a distant memory at this point, and tea was practically an unknown luxury. 

Whitney was the first to speak again. “So,” they said, bringing the mug to their lips. “What’ve you been doing during the apocalypse?”

Bones laughed, a sound that was unfamiliar to both of them. “I’ve been wandering around, eating what I can, and drinking dirty water. What have you been doing? Have you been here the entire time?”

Whitney smiled. “I haven’t done much. I tried resuscitating the garden, but since that didn’t work, I’ve been collecting firewood, cooking what food I have left, and sleeping. A lot. This is my house, actually. I lived here before… I don’t know, whatever this is, the apocalypse or whatever happened. Sometimes I put on makeup just to feel like myself again, you know? I’d wake up and see myself without recognizing the person in the mirror. I figured if I was losing myself, who else would be left? I’ve gotten into the habit of talking to myself lately— I’m rambling, I know. I used to hate people who did that, people who gave too much of themselves away in a conversation, but now I think I understand them a little better now. I guess I finally get that you, I mean, not you specifically, but you don’t need a nuclear winter to start sharing your thoughts. It’s a little late now though.

They were surprisingly talkative, Bones thought, feeling solemn again. He never talked much to begin with, but it was undemanding to fall back into listening. Listening was comfortable, and today comfort looked like red brick walls, mis-matched chairs, and Whitney, who had soft, light blue hair and fawn colored eyes.

“Yeah,” Bones said simply. “I think I understand. I think I do.” His throat hurt from the sudden use, and he gulped the tea. It tasted a little like lemons. Bones hadn’t been much for tea before, but he drank it anyway. Whitney shifted their long legs under the table, and got up to fetch the kettle. 

“More tea, Bones?” 

“I’m alright, but thank you.”

“ ‘Kay.”

Whitney poured themselves another cup, and chewed thoughtfully on their lip. “It’s getting dark,” they observed.

“Yeah,” Bones replied.

“Bones, I’m asking if you want to stay the night.”

They had canned mandarin oranges and spinach for dinner that night. Whitney apologized for the lack of food, but Bones just nodded and patted them on the shoulder, and the matter was settled. Whitney didn’t seem to mind his quietness, and they fell into comfortable silence yet again until Whitney, as usual, said something.

“My bed’s up in the attic,” Whitney said with mild embarrassment, tugging the sleeve of their turquoise cotton pullover. “I had a couch, but someone stole a bunch of my stuff last month, so I don’t have extras of anything. I’ll take the floor, okay?”

Who offered their only bed to a complete stranger? Bones thought. It was hard enough to find people like Whitney before the incident, so what were the odds they would show up, rather, that he would show up on their doorstep five months after the end of the world?

“Thanks.”

Bones lay in Whitney’s bed. It was really just a futon on the floor, but it wasn’t hard ground, and it felt nice, even if it wasn’t his. There was nothing like returning to your own bed after a long time, even if it would never feel quite the same as you ever remembered it. He turned over, and burrowed into the warm down comforter. Rain had begun to fall outside as night came over the landscape like a dark sheet, and it tap tap tapped at the window next to the futon. It was part of the vaulted ceiling, and if the stars were still visible, it would have been beautiful. Whitney was on the floor next to him and had taken nothing but a pillow to sleep on.

Bones turned over to face the stranger who had given him shelter for the night, and when he looked into Whitney’s eyes, they gazed back. Whitney had big gray eyes, and to Bones, they were like two perfect marbles set into an angular, pale, androgynous face. Those eyes reminded him a little of the pebbles that sat at the bottom of streams, or the fog that skimmed the ocean with the coming of dawn.

“Good night, Bones,” Whitney mumbled, already half asleep.

“Good night, Whitney.”

They made love on the futon as the sun began to rise. It was slow and quiet, and they listened to the rain as they slid against each other. Sometimes Bones would rub soothing circles into Whitney’s back, and they would still for a moment, not wanting the moment to end. Whitney tucked their head and grabbed at Bones’ shoulders, eyes closed in and forehead furrowed in concentration. 

They lay together afterwards, legs tangled under the comforter. “What a mess we’ve made,” Bones said as he lazily dragged his fingers down Whitney’s chest, wiping away the stickiness that clung there. He kissed their forehead, and Whitney, for once, was silent, only pulling him down to their lips before they both settled nose to nose. “We should go rinse off,” said Bones. Whitney laced their fingers together, and they walked down the stairs and into the backyard together. 

Completely naked, and still hand in hand, they walked through green grass until they came upon a small, clear pond. Whitney eased into the water, and let out a hiss. “It’s always so cold this time of year, I can’t stand it,” they said, folding both arms in for warmth. Bones slid in and waded to the spot where Whitney stood. “I guess I’ll have to keep you warm, then,” Bones said and he encircled his arms around Whitney’s torso, and they laughed like a thousand clear bells chiming at once. “I guess you will.” 

And he did.


End file.
